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role in World War II

...down the Burma Road to China for three months, isolating Chiang Kai-shek. Japanese militarists then arranged a new government in Tokyo under the weak Konoe Fumimaro, expecting that Foreign Minister Matsuoka and War Minister Tōjō Hideki would dominate. On July 27 the Cabinet decided to ally with the Axis and strike into Southeast Asia even as it sought to resume normal trade with the...

...and Italy, by contrast, recognized Japan as the leading power in the Far East by concluding with it the Tripartite, or Axis, Pact of September 27, 1940: negotiated by Japanese foreign minister
Matsuoka Yosuke, the pact pledged its signatories to come to one another’s help in the event of an attack “by a power not already engaged in war.” Japan also concluded a neutrality pact...